New initiative for mass market mobile TV devices

Fifteen mobile service providers and broadcast network operators represented in bmcoforum have launched an initiative to come up with common handset specs for vendors, in order to speed up market introduction of new handsets.

These are 3, Orange and Media Broadcast from Austria, 3 Italy, Media Broadcast from Germany, Antenna Hungaria, Dominanta and KENTAVR from Russia, DStv Mobile from Nigeria, Ghana, Namibia and Kenya, Safaricom from Kenya, Digita from Finland, INFO-TV-FM from Poland, KPN from the Netherlands as well as Mediaquest and Smart from the Philippines.

These companies have jointly signed a letter that requests the update of mobile phone roadmaps and an offer to discuss the development of common handset requirements based on the bmcoforum published profiles. The objective is to have a variety of DVB-H enabled devices available as soon as possible, preferably in time for the FIFA World Cup tournament in June 2010.